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A WAR DOCUMENT 




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NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1918, 
WASHINGTON. 

I HAVE PRIVATELY PRINTED AS A WAR 
DOCUMENT THE ADDRESS OF THE SOLICITOR 
GENERAL AND DISTRIBUTED A LIMITED NUM- 
BER OF COPIES AMONG CERTAIN OF MY 
FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES. 

BLACKBUBN ESTERLINE. " 



ADDRESS 

OF 

HONORABLE JOHN W. DAVIS 

SOLICITOR GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES 

AT 

*«THE ELLIPSE," WASHINGTON, D. C. 

ON THE LAST DAY FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS 

TO THE SECOND LIBERTY LOAN 

OCTOBER 27, 1917 



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OCTOBER 27, 1917, was the last day for 
subscriptions to the Second Liberty 
Loan. At four o'clock P. M. a demon- 
stration was held in Washington under the 
auspices of the Liberty Loan Committee of 
Washington, consisting of Mr. John Poole, 
Chairman, Mr. Corcoran Thorn, Mr. Eugene 
E. Thompson, Mr. Eugene E. Ailes, and Mr. 
B. Frank Saul. 

Several of the Departments had declared a 
half holiday. Large bodies of employees of 
the Government, led by bands, marched in 
parades from their respective offices to ''The 
Ellipse," where approximately 100,000 people 
gathered. In the parades and gathering there 
appeared banners displaying the total amounts 
of the subscriptions of the employees of De- 
partments, viz : War Department, $2,389,800, 
average per capita, $313; Interior Depart- 
ment, $1,554,850; Indian Office, $306,450. 

On the grandstand there were many distin- 
guished guests, including the Secretary of the 
Treasury, Mr. William G. McAdoo; the Sec- 
retary of War, Mr. Newton D. Baker ; the Sec- 
retary of the Navy, Mr. Josephus Daniels, and 



the Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. David F. 
Houston. 

Secretary McAdoo, who had just returned 
from a thirty days' tour to the Pacific Coast, 
during which he made eighty speeches for the 
Second Liberty Loan, made a stirring address. 

Chairman Poole, who presided, then intro- 
duced — 



HONORABLE JOHN W. DAVIS, 

of West Virginia, 
Solicitor General of the United States. 

In deliberate manner, with a clear and 
steady voice which carried even to those on 
the outskirts of the multitude, the Solicitor 
General spoke as follows : 

Mk. Chairman^ Ladies and Gentlemen : 

If this meeting were called for the purpose 
of inducing subscriptions to the Liberty Loan, 
it would in my judgment be unnecessary ; for, 
all questions of patriotic duty aside, I cannot 
believe that anyone within the sound of my 
voice has not already possessed himself ac- 
cording to the limit of his means of the best 
and safest interest-bearing securities in the 
world — endorsed by one hundred millions of 
people and secured by a first mortgage upon 
half a continent. 

It would seem also that if this meeting is 



held to celebrate the success of the loan it is 
premature. Not because there is the slighest 
doubt that this loan will be subscribed and 
over-subscribed. The American people have 
made up their minds about that. You may 
rest assured, Mr. Secretary, that neither this 
loan nor any of those which will surely follow 
it runs any risk of failure. But no good gen- 
eral halts his troops to celebrate a victory, no 
matter how fully assured, until the sun has 
gone down on the final day of battle. 

But there is a service to be performed by 
this gathering which is neither unnecessary 
nor premature. The true reason for this vast 
assemblage is that we may send out from this 
place a message to our fellow citizens and 
allies; and a message to our enemy as well. 
This is a city set upon a hill, whose light cannot 
be hid. The people of the United States have 
a right to ask as they put their armor on 
whether the pulse of the Nation's Capital beats 
in unison with their own. Let us make them 
know that, prompt as they are to answer the 
call of our great President, -we are no less 
ready ; that, firm as they are in their devotion 
to our cause, we are no less steadfast; and, 
willing as they are to make sacrifice of their 
all for justice and for liberty, they shall not 
outrun us in self-surrender. And to the Kaiser 
and his minions let the word be sent that when 
we authorized our Commander-in-Chief to use 
against them and their insolent aggression all 
the resources of this Nation we meant in 
solemn and in deadly earnest exactly what we 
said. 



When on the first of February last the Im- 
perial German Government declared its in- 
tention to enter upon a campaign of unre- 
stricted murder, to deny to American citizens 
the right to travel in security upon the open 
seas — the immemorial highway of the na- 
tions — and to make indiscriminate war upon 
all mankind, it turned to us and asked the 
sneering question: ^*What are you going to do 
about it r' 

To fully catch the weight and import of that 
insulting challenge we should remember that 
we were not the first to whom it had been ad- 
dressed. It had been flung at tiny Serbia ; and 
that nation of patriots replied by hurling from 
her soil in ruin and confusion an invading 
army larger than her own. And when at last, 
attacked in front and rear, overwhelming num- 
bers drove her soldiers through the icy rigors 
of the Albanian mountains, they went not in 
surrender but only that they might rest and 
refit themselves and return to the attack once 
more. 

Belgium faced it when in reply to the de- 
mand for the surrender of her honor she re- 
torted that ''Belgium is a country, not a 
road"; and she made her answer good with 
the thunder of her guns at Liege, albeit at the 
cost of her own martyrdom. 

It was the same challenge which was ad- 
dressed to Russia; and upon hearing it the 
Great Bear stirred himself and took toll of 
more than a million and a half of German and 
Austrian prisoners. 



It came to Italy in the form of a demand 
upon her as a member of the Triple Alliance 
that she join the Central Empires in their war. 
But it was the Italy of Victor Emmanuel and 
Garibaldi, of Mazzini and Cavour, of Ma- 
genta and Solferino, which responded: "I 
became your ally for defense and not for ag- 
gression, and in your plans for criminal 
plunder and rapine I will have no lot or part." 
And the men who today are performing prodi- 
gies of valor upon the Eoof of the World, 
among the Alpine snows and glaciers, are the 
lineal descendants in blood and spirit of the 
legions who under Caesar turned back the Ger- 
man hordes and saved the Europe of an earlier 
day. 

German soldiers, drunk with the thought of 
easy triumph, shouted this challenge as they 
rushed on Paris. And all the spirit of im- 
mortal France breathed itself out in the order 
of her great Field Marshal that ushered in the 
day of the Marne. Can it ever be forgotten? 
''Soldiers of France," said he, ''the moment 
has arrived! On tomorrow you will advance 
against the enemy. When you can no longer 
advance you will hold the ground which you 
have gained. When you can no longer hold 
the ground which you have gained you will 
die upon the spot ! " 

And, when lost to all sense of honor or of 
shame, Germany said to that nation which 
shares not only our language, but our tradi- 
tions and ideals of liberty as well: "I shall 
no longer keep the ancient and solemn cove- 



nant between us made for Belgiiini's neutral- 
ity ; what will you do about it ? ' ' — to her lasting- 
glory great England answered: **You may 
break your pledges as you will ; I shall keep 
mine. ' ' And into the scales of justice she flung 
all the weight of Britain's battleships, five mil- 
lions of armed men, and guns that *Houch 
limbers from the Somme to the sea." 

Because our wrongs, no less intolerable, 
come later in time than theirs, shall we be less 
ready to resent them'? Shall not we, too, an- 
swer like men who are freemen and propose 
freemen to remain? Shall we not with all our 
will and all our power make defense to the 
end against this brutal and bloody assault upon 
all that we hold most dear? 

Ah, when Germany comes to stand at the 
bar of history, as stand she surely must, to 
answer for her crimes against mankind, what 
a cloud of witnesses will confront her in that 
reckoning. Belgium will tell of her ruined 
homes and looted cities, her outraged women 
and her mutilated children. Poland will point 
to the bones of the starved that whiten all her 
highways. Serbia from her ashes will cry out 
in accusation ; and the very sea itself will cast 
up its dead that they may speak in her con- 
demnation. Ours be the task to join with the 
other free peoples of the world in leading her 
by force of arms to that solemn judgment bar. 

Nor can we forget, my friends, that in this 
day we, too, are being weighed in the balances 
of God. I take a hint from you, Mr. Secretary, 
and recall the words which President Lincoln 



addressed to Congress in the fateful year 1862, 
and which might well have been written of this 
time. Said he : 

^^Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. 
We of this Congress and this administration 
will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No 
personal significance or insignificance will save 
the one or the other of us. The fiery trial 
through which we pass will light us down in 
honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We 
shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best 
hope on earth.'' 

Shall not we of this later date, with that 
solemn admonition sounding in our ears, re- 
solve without shrinking to lay all that we have ; 
aye, all that we are, on the altar of human 
liberty and freedom ! 



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